“Prior to China’s pilot project, the last operating molten-salt reactor was Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, which ran on uranium. It shut down in 1969.”
China starts building a 10-megawatt thorium molten-salt reactor in the Gobi in 2025, after running a 2-MW version since 2021. The fuel comes from the waste of its rare earth mines. The US invented the design and shelved it 55 years ago. China gets to turn mining tailings into energy independence while everyone else is still writing plans.